Daryl Gregory - The Devil's Alphabet

Tommy said, “You don’t understand, she talked to me about what happened.” The beta looked at him, that flat dark face intending something that Pax couldn’t interpret. “She told me what you did together. You and Jo and Deke.”

Pax stood very still, a slight smile on his face. “We did a lot of stuff together. She was like a sister to us. My mother practically adopted her.”

“She told me, Paxton,” Tommy said. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I was her husband. When you raise children together, you share a trust. A bond.”

“A bond.”

“I know it’s hard for someone like you to understand, but Jo Lynn and I-”

Someone like me? “Jo Lynn left you, Tommy. She moved out on her own. So what kind of bond was that, exactly?”

“Jo Lynn made a bad decision. And the past couple years… well, she hadn’t been herself. If you were around, if you had talked to her, you would know that. She wasn’t the same person anymore.”

“Maybe she just figured out she didn’t need you-hell, didn’t need any of you. This husband thing…” He tried to remember what Aunt Rhonda had said about betas and husbands. “How’s that work exactly? You’re not the girls’ father, you’re not-”

“Maybe not their biological father, but I am their parent,” he said. “That’s the only way that counts.”

Pax almost laughed. He suddenly saw himself as Tommy saw him: a cocky skip, untouched by the Changes and untouchable, riding back into town to claim old rights he’d long abandoned. It was ludicrous, but a dozen other emotions jostled for Pax’s attention-anger, amusement, disgust, jealousy-and he felt them all at once. He couldn’t decide which of the emotions were his own and which were Tommy’s.

Pax said, “And now you’ve got the girls back, you’re keeping ’em, huh?”

Tommy closed his eyes, opened them. “Rainy and Sandra are my daughters. That’s not a secret, Paxton. Everyone in the Co-op knows that they mean everything to me.”

“And you’re the sole owner now.”

“Stop making it sound like that! This isn’t about-” Tommy shook his head and stepped forward. “I know what you’re thinking, Paxton. You’re remembering the old me. It’s true, I wasn’t the nicest guy. But the Changes woke me up, shook out all that bullshit. For the first time in my life I started thinking clear.”

“Born again,” Pax said. Tommy stared at him. “You don’t understand anything, do you?”

“Why don’t you explain it to me.”

Tommy turned and began to walk back toward the Bronco.

“Did you kill her, Tommy?” Pax said. “Come on, you can tell me, we’re buddies.” He realized that he was equally ready to strangle the little bald man or hug him. “Maybe you got angry that she took the kids away from you. That makes total sense. Anybody would sympathize with that.”

Tommy put a hand on the fender and looked over his shoulder at him. “I came to tell you that Jo forgave you, Paxton. For running out on her, for never calling, never asking about the girls.”

Pax blinked.

Tommy shook his head. “Me, I couldn’t let that pass. But Jo’s a better person than I am.”

Pax watched Tommy turn the four-wheel drive around and drive away. Then he rubbed his face with one hand, holding the picture to himself. Damn, he thought. This is mighty shit. He’d barely tasted the vintage. A dab. For a minute there he felt like he was halfway out of his skin and into Tommy’s.

He turned toward the house, the glass of the picture frame smooth under his thumb. Inside, his father was waiting for him, snores rattling the walls, his robe open like a medicine cabinet.

“Show us,” Pax said. It began as simply as that.

Jo tilted her head and said nothing. She sat in the armchair, one smooth leg draped over the arm. It had become so hard to read her new body that he couldn’t tell if she was angry, embarrassed, or amused.

“Oh! You Pretty Things” played on the boom box. Jo was into old Bowie, Ziggy Stardust and earlier. She’d declared Hunky Dory to be the official soundtrack of the Switchcreek Orphan Society. From “Changes” to “Kooks” to “The Bewlay Brothers”-their whole story was there.

“No,” she said finally. “All of us. Right now.”

Deke laughed, a thump like a drum. He lay sprawled across the floor, surrounded by crushed Budweiser cans. Six months after the Changes he was almost eight feet tall and still growing; during a growth spurt his back would sometimes seize up, paralyzing him. Growing pains, the argos called them, even though nobody knew if they were temporary, or if they’d be part of their lives forever. Deke’s preferred treatment was to lie flat on the floor and try to get drunk, which because of his giant body required the openmouthed throughput of a storm drain. Pax and Jo drank with him, less in solidarity than because the quarantine and curfew left them few other entertainment options.

“Y’all knock yourselves out,” Deke said.

Jo slipped out of her chair and stood with her hands on her hips. She wore gym shorts and a cropped tank top that showed her smooth, flat belly. Her skin gleamed in the light of the single floor lamp. “As chairperson of the SOS,” she said, looking down at Deke, “I’d like to make a motion.” Jo was chair, Deke president. Pax, as a half orphan, could not hold office, but he could vote.

“I second,” Pax said.

Pax fell on Deke, pinning him across his wide chest while Jo unsnapped his jean shorts and began to tug them down. Deke grunted and laughed, halfheartedly pushed Pax aside. Even buzzed and immobilized by back pain he could have thrown them across the room if he wanted.

Deke wasn’t wearing underwear. Pax had seen him naked dozens of times before the Changes, but this was the first time since.

“Well would you look at that,” Jo said. “You’d think you argo boys would be bigger.”

Deke roared, laughing, and reached for his pants. Jo pushed his hands away. “Come on now,” she said. “This is for science.”

Deke stopped struggling, and Pax, sprawled across his chest, looked down the length of his friend’s body. The sunken stomach, the hip bones like shovel blades, a patch of gray pubic hair like a tuft of straw. His penis seemed too short for his giant body, though it was wide as Paxton’s fist. Pax had no idea if all argos were shaped like this. Probably Deke didn’t know himself.

Jo pulled Deke’s shorts down his thighs. He raised his knees and she slid them the rest of the way off.

The atmosphere in the room had changed.

Jo touched her red-brown hand to Deke’s white thigh, only a few inches from his dick. She looked up and said, “You next, Paxton.”

Jo, as always, was in charge. Even changed, she was the referee, the intermediary. Later she’d tell him, What choice did they have? There were no books for their people. No skin mags, no soft-core movies on Cinemax to show them what their bodies were supposed to look like. It was no crime to be curious.

Paxton leaned back on his knees and pulled off his shirt. Then he stood and without looking at them slid down his shorts, stepped out of them. He was naked except for his white Hanes underwear.

“Everything,” Jo said.

He didn’t want to take off his underwear. He was already hard.

Jo stood and walked to him. She slipped off her tank top. She wore a dainty bra, startling white against her wine-dark skin. She reached behind her, performed tiny magic with her fingers, and the bra fell away.

Her chest was almost as flat as Paxton’s. Her nipples, dark red and small as dimes, were set a couple inches lower than he expected. She grasped Pax’s arms and guided him down to the floor so that he was lying shoulder to shoulder with Deke. Deke’s skin was cool and dry, and Paxton felt feverish.